


The Truth's In The Melody

by AndreaLyn



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: M/M, Truth Serum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:55:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27372283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: Alex's performances at open mic have become the hottest ticket in town, seeing as he's under the effect of a truth compulsion that only kicks in when he's singing.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 24
Kudos: 116





	The Truth's In The Melody

When Michael walks into the Crashdown on Saturday morning, it’s _insane_.

Not busy, not slightly popular, but fucking insane. People are in crowds on their phones sharing something, there’s a noise level that’s making his head hurt, and suddenly Michael is thinking longingly of the shitty black coffee that comes from the ancient coffee maker in his Airstream. He endures a few bumps to his shoulder as he wades through the crowd to get to the bar stools, giving Rosa a dubious look.

“Hey,” he starts, “what the hell?”

“Good morning to you too,” is Rosa’s sarcastic reply. 

“Did your Dad debut some new Instagram happy donut?” he asks, swiveling on the stool, but seeing as Isobel is nowhere to be seen, he’s guessing that’s not it. 

No sooner than he thinks that, but Isobel and Max join the fray. Isobel is grinning like an idiot and she grabs Michael by the shoulders, her gaze fixed on Rosa. “Please tell me you haven’t told him.”

“After your thirty vaguely threatening voicemails? I didn’t tell him,” Rosa promises. “Besides, I want to be a witness to this,” she says, and angles her phone to record Michael.

Max, ever suffering Max, even looks amused.

“Is this a third encounter something?”

“Probably,” Isobel admits. “So you know how open mic night was last night?”

Michael gapes at her, unsure why this required a bunch of threatening texts to Rosa, a diner full of chattering townsfolk (who are looking at him speculatively, now that he thinks about it), and Max looking sympathetic. “It’s Saturday, so yeah, it was.”

“Alex had a, um, new song.”

“Good for Alex.”

And now, Isobel’s smile turns scarily gleeful. “It was a very forward song about the _size_ of some cowboy’s horses. It became very clear, very quickly, that it was about the size of your dick and how well you fuck him. I don’t think Alex realized what he was doing, which means two things. One, something is going on that Alex can’t control.”

Michael’s gaping at her, mindful that Rosa is recording this.

“And two?”

“Well, now we know that you’re a memorable fuck, at least.” 

Michael’s lost.

“Why the hell would Alex sing that?”

“Alex can only tell the truth when he’s singing,” Max cuts in, taking the stool beside Michael like he’s about to reach out and take his hands into his own for some kind of fucked up counselling. “Uh…” He glances to the side. “You’re on YouTube. Well, Alex’s song is on YouTube. I’m pretty sure Roswell figured out it’s about you.”

This is just great. Michael gapes at Max, then Rosa, and his gaze lands on Isobel, who looks just guilty enough that she knows something.

“What happened?” he asks her pointedly.

“Okay, before you get upset, I was trying to be nice!” 

“Isobel!”

“I was!” she snaps. “Alex asked for my help. He wanted me to go into his head and help pull out lyrics and melodies, sort of like two people doing the work so he wouldn’t lose anything.” She winces as she takes the stool on the other side of Michael. “I think I did something, though, because every time he sings now, it’s true. All of it. He had some very pointed opinions about some of my outfits and a really funny little song about Kyle’s manscaping, but for the most part, most of his songs are still about you.”

That’s unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on how you look at it. 

“Okay, and what does Alex think about it?”

“I don’t think the shade of red he went exists in the English language yet,” Max mumbles. “Sorry, man. He was pretty embarrassed about the whole thing, except the video’s kind of taking off,” he admits. “When Isobel called to ask if he wanted her to fix it…”

“He told me not yet,” she says.

Michael gapes. “Why the hell not?” If Alex is doing this on purpose to get back at him for something, Michael’s going to be pissed. “Wait,” he says. “Are any of the songs about the time I accidentally used my teeth, because I was _seventeen_ and…”

“Nope!” Rosa shouts loudly, throwing her rag at Michael’s face and walking away.

Michael pries it off, grimacing as he smells fry oil and burger grease on it. It’s not like he’d been taking care of his hair or anything, but if he were, that would’ve ruined it.

“Isobel, why?” he echoes.

“He needs one more open mic night, and I’m bringing you to it. Then, he said he’ll debate letting me fix it.”

What the hell is Alex waiting for? What could he be waiting for that would stop him from fixing his little singing problem? “And what about day to day? Normal conversation?” he asks. “Can he lie, then?”

“The only time he’s affected is when he’s singing, for better or worse,” Isobel confirms.

That’s good. It’s not great for Alex’s future at open mic night, but that’s good. He frowns, because the songs shouldn’t all be about him. “Hey,” he says, as Max and Isobel are packing up to go (while the town keeps whispering on behind him). “How come Forrest escaped all this? They dated for like, four months.”

Dated, then ended things amicably, but if Alex is going around truth-telling to the tune of his songs, then shouldn’t he feature there too?

“Oh, he was there,” Isobel says helpfully. “What was the lyric, Max?”

Max looks tortured. “I had you for four months time, but all that time, never made you mine. Body as untouched as the first fallen snow, but it wasn’t your hand you wanted, no, oh no.” 

Did he have that memorized? Wait. No. Michael can see him reading it off his phone.

Wait. Did he _write it down_?

That’s so much worse.

“Remember that summer when you made me pretend to be your boyfriend to get Noah to notice you?” Michael asks Isobel.

“Regrettably.”

“This? This is worse,” he says, and storms out to the soundtrack of people whispering behind his back about what a good lay he is. At least, he hopes some of that is in there. It can’t all be about that awkward first time or some of those painful moments during the summer when Michael hadn’t really paid much attention to how injured his hand was.

For the next week, he’s able to ignore it.

He does that by hiding at the junkyard, because Sanders won’t go near an open mic night and doubly so, he doesn’t care for town gossip because it’s the devil’s hogwash or the witch’s tit or something. His threats sort of start blending together and they stopped being effective when Michael had been sixteen.

Ignoring it becomes impossible when he gets a visitor to his door.

“Michael!”

He rolls his eyes, putting down his textbook. “What do you want, Iz?”

“It’s open mic night,” Isobel tells him, barging right into his Airstream. He’s really not loving her casual use of powers that only he used to have. 

Michael stares her down. “Great. Fix it,” he demands, because he’s not wanting to go and hear that Alex is ashamed and disappointed with him. After hearing that there had been three songs about Michael’s talents in bed (three, honestly, he’s a little impressed), Michael figures that they’re winding around to that truth.

Isobel hums thoughtfully. “Maybe after tonight.”

“I will bribe you,” he offers. “I will do whatever you want. Do you want my Airstream? Just _fix this_.”

“After tonight,” Isobel repeats, and she thinks she’s being sweet. She does.

She’s not.

“Fine, let’s go, I hate you,” Michael grumbles, inflecting all of the separate sentences with the exact same intonation. He locks up behind him with his mind, yanking on his suede coat and putting on his cowboy hat. 

He’s got to have his armor on, especially for this. 

The Pony is packed by the time they arrive, but they part like the Red Sea for him. Grimacing, Michael heads inside, not sure he likes that. He’s pretty sure they’ve been waiting for him, and also that there’s a seat with a piece of paper taped to it with ‘angry cowboy’ in Valenti’s handwriting.

“You’re hoping it’s a shitty song about my talents in bed, aren’t you?” he gripes at Valenti as he settles into the chair, yanking the paper off.

Valenti says nothing, but his stupid smirk answers for him. 

Alex takes the stage, his head down. He looks rueful as he looks up, but caught off guard when he sees Michael. “No,” he says, which must be to Liz and Maria, who are both standing off stage. “You swore he wouldn’t be here!”

“Someone was going to record it anyway,” Maria points out. “Alex, just sing.”

Alex looks freaked out, breathing out raggedly. He mouths ‘I’m sorry’ to Michael, but it’s not his fault that Isobel accidentally knocked some kind of truth switch in his brain when she’d been in there. And how the hell does it only apply when there’s a melody? 

He’s here, now. 

It’s time to listen to whatever Alex has to say. 

The melody is something Michael’s heard before, when Alex would fuck around with the guitar that summer when they were seventeen. It’s a pretty song, but then, all of Alex’s songs are pretty. For about five seconds, Michael thinks this is all bullshit and the town’s fucking with him, but then, Alex starts singing.

“I got all this room in my heart for angry cowboys, but I keep going back to the start,” Alex begins, watching Michael with a fixed gaze. “And I kiss you in my memories, and I dream about the stars. They’re your home, your dreams, and your heart. I don’t know how to compare, because I’m not quite so galactic,” he says, strumming a chord and singing into the next rest, “but I love you all the same, ain’t that a bit anticlimactic.”

The rest rushes past Michael’s head.

Alex loves him.

Alex _loves_ him.

Someone grabs his shoulder and squeezes it, whispering that the song is over, but he’s not sure he can move. 

He doesn’t.

Isobel takes drastic measures and kicks him in the Achilles, making him hiss and jump forward at the same time, glaring at her. He mouths ‘fix it’ and he shows up at Alex’s side, scratching the back of his neck with his fingers. “So uh,” he starts, “that wasn’t the sex-filled romp that I’d been led to expect.”

“I think I got those out of my system,” Alex jokes, but it’s clear he’s nervous from the way he’s staring at Michael and the small tremor in his voice. “I’m pretty glad the most graphic one was the first. People weren’t so quick to record those ones.” He’s standing there straight and tall, gripping his guitar. “Isobel said she’d fix it, but I wanted one last song, when you were here. I needed to say that, without anything holding me back. I meant it, Guerin. I might be able to lie when I’m not singing, but it was important to me that I said that.”

“That my heart’s in the stars? It’s not,” Michael says, shaking his head. 

“Oh?” Michael can see Alex’s pulse leaping; he can see how obviously nervous he is. “Then where is it?”

Michael reaches forward and taps two fingers just over Alex’s heart, feeling like he doesn’t need words to explain where it is, and where it’s always going to belong. 

“Next time you sing about the truth, you’re gonna have to say that my heart belongs with yours. Always,” Michael says, more smug than ever to get to prove someone wrong, even though it’s Alex, and he’s proving that he’s in love with him too. 

Alex glances past Michael’s shoulder to where Isobel is waiting for him. “Hopefully after tonight, my songs will be a little less truthful.”

“Maybe in public? I wouldn’t mind the honesty sticking around when it’s just the two of us,” Michael admits, putting himself out there on a limb to make the request.

Alex considers him for a second, not budging from where Michael’s hand still rests over his heart. “...yeah,” he finally agrees. “Okay.” Then he’s off, to go fix whatever switch Isobel had accidentally flicked on.

_Okay_ , thinks Michael, grinning like an idiot. 

Alex loves him and now the entire town knows. 

Screw _okay_. Today is pretty damn _perfect_ , no doubt about that.


End file.
